橋爪

I just found out that a bunch of my favorite musicians are playing in Salem this summer over a three day festival! I really want to go, but a. It's pretty pricey ($100+) b. I've never been to a music festival before, and perhaps most importantly c. I don't have anybody to go with.

I need to figure this out quickly.

Alright, I'll admit it - I am pretentious about music.

Somebody just buy me two 1200s and a mixer. Please? I'll be forever grateful.

godDAMN I need new music.

Recommend me some sweet albums!

Forty years ago today, one of the greatest soul singers of all time, Otis Redding, and much of his band died in a plane crash.

I was listening to a lot of his music lately, and was kinda surprised that such a landmark crept up behind me so quickly. Only a few minutes ago did I figure out it was the anniversary of his death.

Rest in peace, Otis.

My computer has been giving me some pretty weird messages lately.

The radio station at my college is run with really old computers that no one knows how to use. The system was set up in 2001, and at some point between then and now, the radio program died completely, so these things have seen a lot of neglect. The guys who run the radio program even tell us to not touch the computers at all, in case we screw 'em up. To be honest, I'm amazed that they haven't caught fire or anything yet.

I think I'm going to try to completely overhaul the system, which means a lot of tinkering around on my computer to see if I can get things working before I try anything on the radio's computers. As a result of all this tinkering, I've seen a lot of things I've never seen before:

( Cut for pictures )

I never realized my computer could be so saucy! :o

Got this meme from fehriku. You get a letter and provide ten songs beginning with that letter. I got an M!

(In no particular order)

1. The Beatles - "Mother Nature's Son."

Probably my favorite Beatles song, nice, acoustic, and slightly uptempo.

2. Aphex Twin - "Milk Man."

Aphex Twin is just really weird. Not sure how else to explain it.

3. Harvey Danger - "Moral Centralia."

Harvey Danger is a great American alternarock band from Seattle. What really endears me to the band is that they offered up their last album for free, legal download.

4. Dschingis Khan - "Moskau."

The best German disco you will ever hear.

5. The Roots - "Mellow My Man/Jusufckwithis."

The Roots are a great instrumental hip-hop band. This track's from their live album, "The Roots Come Alive," and I'll be interested to see who, if anyone, downloads this.

6. Tito Puente - "Mambo Gallego (D-Code Remix."

An excellent remix of an excellent mambo song.

7. DJ Shadow - "Mashin' on the Motorway."

I love DJ Shadow, but this is a really weird song. It's essentially road rage put to a beat. Fun.

8. Junior Senior - "Move Your Feet."

Dance!

9. Dire Straights - "Money for Nothing."

This is filler, really. You'd be surprised how few songs beginning with M I have.

10. Lucas Santtana - "Mensagem de Amor."

I've really started to like Brazilian music, and this song is a great example of why. Soulful, acoustic, relaxing.

My neighbor, Julia, and I have an internet radio show and we named it today - 8-Track and a Turntable. The name comes from the musical equipment we randomly discovered in our dorm today.

Our show is every Friday, 6-7 Pacific Standard Time. You can catch the stream on http://www.willamette.edu/org/radio/wuwire/

Currently, our show is only available in stream form, but we hope to get podcasts up and running pretty soon.

Our plan at the moment is to have a different theme every week, with the theme for this week being FUNK AND SOUL

LISTEN

FOR GREAT JUSTICE

Trust me.

Download it here.

One thing I have made a point of doing at Willamette is to attempt to get involved in as many things as I possibly can, so I can

a. Keep busy.
b. Meet new people.
c. Learn.

Thusfar, there haven't been all that many opportunities; students are still settling in, and clubs haven't really started up yet. The only activities that have really started so far have been Dungeons and Dragons and WU Wire - the college radio station.

Let me say upfront that I have never played D&D before...well, before today at least. I gave it a shot today to experience the game first-hand. It couldn't be as bad as popular stigma had led me to believe, could it?

Wrong.

Despite being MENTOK, THE LEVEL THREE ELVEN ROGUE, I had a really hard time justifying spending nine hours on awkwardly structured and generally unfun roleplaying. Hell, it took a few hours before we could even start the game, because we had to spend lots of time and effort filling out our character sheets, which detailed even the most mundane aspects of our characters (height, weight, age, etc.).

Lesson learned: no more D&D.

Fortunately, student radio promises to be far better. My neighbor, Julia and I have agreed to do an hour-long show together. We still have yet to establish exactly when our show will be, or exactly what we'll fill that hour with, but it's still very exciting. Our musical tastes seem to differ and compliment each other enough that it should work out splendidly.

"Who I Am," "Ordinary World," anything by Rick Astley, or any other easy listening music at Albertson's ever again, I am going to retch onto a checkstand and double-bag it.

Ugh

( Music Under the Cut )

Courtesy of Chris Osborn:

"Music is water. It's in a river and it's free. Anybody can go to that river and drink. But then somebody came up with the idea of bottling the water."
-Ian McKaye

Jamiroquai: y/n?

According to the Crystal Ballroom's website, the DJ Shadow's April 23 show is all ages, meaning I'm gon' begin my hunt for people to go with! :D

Here are some tracks from his discography:

Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain
(From his first album, 1996's Endtroducing..., which is made entirely of sampled sounds.)

Six Days
(From 2002's Private Press.)

This Time (I'm Gonna Try It My Way)
(From last year's The Outsider.)

So if you:

1. Enjoy above music
2. Are willing to shell out $30
3. Love Michael

Then shoot me an e-mail or something and we'll arrange something.

Nobody told me that DJ Shadow was playing Portland next month!

I'm very, very tempted to go.

I don't, however, want this to end up like every other concert I've been interested in: planning on going, but ultimately failing to because of fear of commitment.

Anyone interested at all in coming with?

Edit: It's on April 23 and I'm still not sure if minors can go.

I'm quickly approaching 2k songs on my computer, and to commemerate this ultimately meaningless landmark, I figure that I could extent an open offer to alla y'all: to share this music that I have acquired in the oh-so-clichéd form of a mix CD. I've got about 100 blank CDs, so I figure why not? If you're interested, comment with something letting me know what kinds of music you're into and what kinds you would like explore further.

How much does bit rate affect sound quality when it comes to digital music - for instance, does a 128 kbps song sound significantly worse than a 320 kbps song?

I'm wonderin' because I'm a wannabe audiophile and would like a second/third opinion before I do something stupid like re-rip my entire music collection to my computer. :\

One of the best things about the internet is the availability of...well, anything. Two things in particular caught my attention lately:

1. Jesus Camp on Google Video.

If you haven't seen or heard about this eye-opening documentary yet, I would definitely recommend checking it out. It follows evangelical Christianity, and how it affects children in America. A bit long, and a bit worrisome, but interesting nonetheless.

2. Chrome Children.

A hip-hop album available for free, legal download by the record label Stones Throw. It's fairly varied, with everything from instrumentals to remixes to straight-up hip-hop. Better than most albums out there, and with a much more attractive cost.

Gah, corporate America.

Viacom recently requested that YouTube pull videos from their site - over 100,000 in all. Why? They claim that hosting these videos is theft of intellectual property, copyright infringement, blah blah blah. Of course, these sort of generalizations lead to stupid situations like this:



A forty-four second Stephen Colbert fan video being removed. Oh, and did I mention that the video was part of an ongoing contest requested by Stephen Colbert himself? That's right, the show's host encouraged people to make these types of videos, yet they were still taken down due to copyright infringement.

[Edit: I was alerted that Colbert specified videos to be sent to his website, but I think the point still stands.]

It's nonsensical to me. The internet provides a way for product - whether it's music, video, or what have you - to proliferate, gain popularity, gain exposure. It's almost free advertising. And yet, many companies stifle this, much like Viacom has. I can understand the threat that the internet presents to their market share, but is this the best way to go about confronting it? Some companies, some artists have recognized and embraced this paradigm shift and begun to offer their content for free online.

I can download an album from the band Harvey Danger for absolutely no cost and no fear of legal repercussions. A collaboration between two hip-hop artists, Talib Kweli and Madlib, was similarly made available, albeit temporarily. Hell, I've downloaded a book (Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig) for free with the author's blessing. These artists offer such downloads because they've recognized that the internet has changed how the world views media, and how media is distributed. It is damned smart of them too, because nothing screams publicity like "FREE CONTENT." Because I have more access to their content, I am more likely to go to their concerts, their book signings; I am more likely to tell my friends; I am more likely to promote the artist in general.

Maybe I'm being naive and idealistic again. I'm probably only a bit irked because I really liked that Colbert video. :(

I've come to the realization that I need people with music tastes similar to mine. It drives me nuts that the only person in recent memory I could talk with about music was Sensei.

Also, shaving one's legs is more difficult than I ever thought.

Eds: If anyone is on Last.fm, my profile is here.